Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Markets & Moorings, Burgers & Baseball

I got into work early and lodged my application to rent the gorgeous apartment I found on the weekend. There are 10 other applicants ahead of me, but I'm hopeful of a favourable outcome when the preferred tenant is announced today. I'm not sure whether the 10 people ahead of me need to be declared bad applicants before I'm even considered, or whether my merits are considered just as fairly alongside the others, regardless of when I submitted my paperwork. When I spoke to the guy at the leasing place on Saturday, he explicitly told me that it wasn't a first-come, first-served process, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the good phone call later today.

Buy, buy - Sell, sell

At lunch time I was invited to take my boss's house guests on an escorted tour of The Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Usually if you start talking finance with me, I take a mental space walk and probably daydream about buying shoes. But yesterday's tour was a valuable opportunity to learn more about a company that last year traded contracts and stocks to the value of $827 trillion. That is a big number (and that was a very big understatement!).

Captain Leadfoot and the trip to the Pier

As my afternoon bus driver decided to channel his inner Sandra Bullock along Lakeshore Drive, causing me to fall ungracefully into a typical weirdo passenger, I got home and flopped on my bed and responded to an urgent phone call from Bork. Rather than stay home, I instead chose to get changed and go and meet her back Downtown for a cocktails/finger food guided tour of Kanan Cruises's newly-refurbished cruise liner that is moored at Navy Pier. Afterwards we had our photo taken alongside the crazy fibreglass pirates on the wharf and then we walked through the parklands to the edge of the beach and had a beautiful view over the Lakeshore Drive city skyline. As the sun was setting and the sky turned pink and orange, I don't think I've ever seen the Hancock Tower look more beautiful.

Rule #1 - Stuff thine face whenever possible

But we didn't dwell on such things for long. We jumped in a cab and went to Southport for dinner at Messners, a pub I've often passed but never gone into. Mondays was $5 burger night, and so I indulged in a delicious helping of greasy goodness, but I probably could have been a little less liberal with the ketchup. I was constantly at risk of getting it all over me and the red dress I was wearing. Fortunately the Guinness steadied my hands and I was all good.

Batter up, and beers up!

When the Cubs game at nearby Wrigley Field finished, me and Bork ended our night at a pub on Clark St with some of her friends. But when Bork said the word "shots", that was my cue to get outta there and head home [see, I can be sensible when I need to be].

So I crawled into bed around 1am, semi-aware that my alarm was going to force me out of bed only five and a half hours later. Fortunately my subconscious didn't think about all that for too long, and I was fast asleep within seconds after having kicked my week off to a splendid start.